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Sounding Like a Chip Off the Old Boss

Perhaps the Yankees have only themselves to blame for this revolting development, this idea of the Red Sox’ playing the Colorado Rockies in the World Series. If it weren’t for the Yankees, after all, the Red Sox wouldn’t be there.

On the eve of the World Series, that was basically the view of the man the Red Sox might see as the son of Darth Vader. He is really Hank Steinbrenner, and he is half of the brother team that is replacing the father as chief of the outfit known in Boston as the Evil Empire.

Twenty years ago, in his first tour of duty with the family jewel, Hank Steinbrenner did not talk with and had no use for the news media. He didn’t care much for the players either, leaving him little to like about the job, which is why he went back to the family horse farm in Ocala, Fla.

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But now that he is on the verge of joining his father, George, and his brother, Hal, as general partners of the Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner is taking a more assertive role, privately and publicly.

In a telephone interview Monday night, for example, Steinbrenner suggested that the Red Sox were where they were because of the inspiration they took from their rivalry with the Yankees. His comments came in response to the question of whether the Red Sox had passed the Yankees because this was their second World Series in four years.

“No, nobody would think that,” Steinbrenner said. “If you look at the last 12 years, we’ve won four and they’ve won one. We’ve been in six; they’ve been in one. No, they haven’t passed us. They’ve done a great job, don’t get me wrong. They’ve done what they had to do to keep up with us.

“You have to admire what they have accomplished. Let’s face it. In order to compete with us, as they have lately, they’ve had to pretty much do things like us. You have to admire them for that.”

The two teams are “stuck with each other,” he said, adding: “I think other divisions can count their blessings that they don’t have to compete with us or the Red Sox. We do things to spur each other on.”

The teams have long had a fierce rivalry, though the rivalry slipped into hibernation when one or the other, or both, had poor or mediocre teams. The rivalry has escalated under the current Red Sox ownership led by John Henry, a former minority partner of the Yankees.

The desire to keep up with or eclipse the Yankees prompted the Red Sox to spend $103 million last winter to get Daisuke Matsuzaka and to sign J. D. Drew for $70 million and Julio Lugo for $36 million. They have competed with the Yankees for other players, including José Contreras, whose signing by the Yankees sent Theo Epstein, the young Red Sox general manager, into a tantrum and prompted the Evil Empire comment by Larry Lucchino, the team president.

“The Red Sox,” Steinbrenner acknowledged, “have become a popular team.” Then he added, “If it wasn’t for the rivalry with us, they’d be just another team.”

And he put the team’s relative popularity into perspective, at least from his point of view.

“They talk about Red Sox nation,” he said. “We talk about Yankee universe. As bad as they want it, they’ll never be the Yankees with their brand.”

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Hank SteinbrennerCredit
Louis Lanzano/Associated Press

Here he mentioned all of the Yankees paraphernalia that is seen throughout the country — caps, shirts, jackets, license plates. “But you have to admire what they’ve done in becoming our biggest rival. In the past it was in name only.”

“What would they be if they were in another division?” Steinbrenner asked. “They’d still be good, but there are other good teams in baseball. The bottom line is the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is the best thing baseball has going for it.”

But the reality is the Red Sox are playing tonight, and the Yankees are not. A year from now, Steinbrenner suggested, the situation will be reversed.

“We’ll do what we have to do to win, just like the Red Sox have done,” he said, explaining that the Yankees will continue spending as they had under his father, who, he said, “for the most part is retired.”

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The brightest part of the Yankees’ future, Hank said, is their young pitchers, including Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy. “We have the best young pitching in baseball,” he said, “not just in the majors but in the minors coming behind them. As long as we keep adding young position players like Cabrera and Canó, we’re going to be tough for 10 years,” he said in reference to outfielder Melky Cabrera and second baseman Robinson Canó.

Will Alex Rodriguez be part of next year’s team? “We’ll see what happens,” he said, “but of course we want to keep him.”

Rodriguez can opt out of the remaining three years of his contract 10 days after the end of the World Series.

“We’d like to get together with him before he makes a decision,” Steinbrenner said. “Whatever happens after that is up to him.”

Could he see Rodriguez becoming a free agent and signing with the Red Sox, who tried to trade for him four years ago before the Yankees got him?

“I don’t think of it that way,” Steinbrenner said. “It’s been made clear to Scott Boras that if he opts out we won’t pursue him. That’s not a bluff.”

With the Red Sox in the World Series for the second time in four years, could they replace the Yankees as the Evil Empire?

“You mean us all of a sudden becoming the underdog?” Steinbrenner said. “I hope not. I hope we can win enough in the next 20 years that we’ll continue to be Darth Vader, if that’s how they want to portray us.”